pag. 315-323

 FAREWELL TO THE VALLEY

" To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new,"

THE ways by which the human streams may find their way out of the Valley Enclosed have been made broad and easy in these days. There is the little railway for those who would go Arezzo-wards, and one may get to Florence that way too, as the river does, roundabout. But the quickest route, and the pleasantest in fine weather, between the Casentino and the lower valley of the Arno, is by the road aver the Consuma Pass, through some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in Italy. You may enter the Valley or leave it, as you will, of course, by the Consuma, but the ascent is rather less arduous journeying towards Florence than in the contrary direction. Even then it is a slow climb upwards for many a mile. The road branches off from the main highway of the Valley a short distance from Certomondo, on the Pratovecchio side, at a point where the chapel once stood in which Bishop Guglielmino is said to have been buried after the great battle. The traveller is in the very midst of the field of Campaldino there, and turns his steps from the Valley just at the scene of its most thrilling history. A little further on you cross the Arno, and looking up the stream catch sight of Romena's towers above the groves of poplars and willows ; on the left the water ripples away over the stones, always between silver clouds of foliage, to its meeting-place with the Solano a furlong or so below.

From here you ascend to Borgo alla Collina. This bit of the road is very interesting, not from any historic memories that I know of, but for the quaint things which one sees upon it. The steepness of the hill occasions much ingenuity in the Casentinese carters and waggoners. A trapelo is necessary, and one sees the strangest combination of beasts in consequence. Almost any creature, from a human being downwards, will be pressed into the service, regardless of incongruity. Huge waggoners' loads, piled mountain high upon a baroccio-a low two-wheeled kind of dray/go slowly up, drawn by three horses of unequal height and size harnessed abreast, with a donkey on one side of them, attached to the vehicle by a rope, and a. pair of oxen fastened on in front, as the trapelo. They are on their way to Florence; the extra beasts will be taken off at the end of the long ascent to Consu.ll.1a, and the rest of the equipage will travel on slowly through the night along the mountain road, often on. the edge of precipitous slopes, the waggoners asleep upon the top of the loads and the horses on their own accord pulling to one side when a rare vehicle is encountered from the opposite direction. Sometimes it is a contadino's "flitting" that one meets on the hill; a miscellaneous collection of household goods heaped upon a little cart, and all the innocente-eyed, smiling women and children of the family atop, while one poor little donkey struggles up beneath the load, a spectacle picturesque but pitiful. One must shut one's eyes to the woes of the ass, if one would be quite happy in the Casentino. But the peasants are by no means always unkind to their beasts. The oxen are as a rule very well cared far, and if they expect much of the ass, many of them do not spare themselves. I remember seeing upon this same hill a load even more mountainous than usual, to which an unusually tiny donkey was harnessed. But beside the donkey was a strong contadino, pulling with all his. might at a rope attached to the cart; three men were pushing behind the wheels, and a fourth at the back, their bodies at an acute angle with the road. The strange thing was that a big, strong, confortable-looking horse was tied on behind and was stepping along at his ease. But remembering the experience of Master Cobblers-awl in Heaven, I forbore to reproach the peasants for their folly, but waited, expecting to see the horse spread wings and carry the whole concern to the top of the hill. Italy, however, is not Heaven. Nothing of the sort happened, and I watched the patient figures toiling up till they disappeared over the brow. In this country human beings are not ashamed to drag burdens. I t is not uncommon to see a man in the shafts, with a donkey in front as leader, and a friend of mine vows that she has seen a woman and an ox drawing a plough together.

The traveller himself in his vettura will be drawn briskly up the hill by the willing nervy little horses generally used in the Casentino, pranked out in bells and feathers. At the top the driver will star t them into a gallop, and thunder beneath the deep gateway and through the narrow street of Borgo alla Collina, with a stupendous cracking of the whip and clatter of hoofs upon the cobblestones, scattering children, geese, hens, donkeys, and all the miscellaneous roba that encumbers the way, and so out into the bare road beyond, all in the twinkling of an eye. Not that he is in any hurry to get to the end of his journey, but because he loves to make a brave appearance among his fellow-men.

Soon after Borgo the road begins to mount up and up the hillside, overlooking the western valleys. You have turned your back on the main Valley and it is soon hidden. But it will reappear again and again to the Lot's wife that most visitors make of themselves when, saying farewell to this enchanting region. You are skirting the upper part of the Arno valley, though on the west side of the hill, and presently as you get higher the towers of Romena suddenly rise up over the ridge on the right. Further on the Badiola appears, an ancient church upon a little rise marked by a group of trees, a familiar landmark from the hillsides above Stia. The Badiola has historic associations. From time immemorial the traffic between Florence and the Casentino has passed over the Consuma, and the old track, though much shorter and less winding, followed the same direction as the present road. I t was by this way that the great Florentine host in all the bravery of war, with its sixteen hundred gaily-caparisoned cavaliers, among whom rode the young Dante Alighieri, crossed the mountains to victory in 1289. They are said to have encamped at the Badiola on their way.

The sight of Romena brings with it another and more sinister Dantesque reminder. There is a lonely farm which you come to upon the road, a mile or two further on. It stands in a bleak desolate spot high up, where the woods do not reach. A few bare knotted poles of trees rise up in front of it. It is called Uom Morto, or Omomorto - the Dead Man. If you climb up behind the house you come upon the traces of the old road, and following it back for about a mile, to a point where another track diverges in the direction of Stia, you will find a heap of stones, the Macia dell'Uom Morto - the Dead Man's Cairn. This rough monument is said to mark the spot where a criminal once suffered death. The heap has grown up from the custom followed by every passer-by of throwing a stone there, out of compassion or some religious feeling, or perhaps with a superstitious idea of warding off evil fortune. The Dead Man, thus memorialised upon the solitary mountain, has found another immortality. He was none other apparently than Maestro Adamo, the false coiner of Romena. Cristoforo Landino tells us in his Commentary on the Divine Comedy that Maestro Adamo “was burnt opposite Romena on an old road from Borgo alla Collina where a heap of stones is still to be seen lo-day, and the peasants, who live about there now, affirm that their grandfathers had heard from their old people before them that it was so." Landino it must be remembered was living within one hundred and fifty years of the event.

Here then died the miserable wretch w ho had forged the sacred seal of the Baptist. And the last sight which mocked his eyes through the flames, to be carried with him to Hell in eternal remembrance, was the evil towers of Romena where the Counts, his masters, had induced him to do the deed.

"Ivi è Romena, là dov' io falsai

 la lega sigillata del Batista

......................

Ma s'io vedessi qui l'anima trista

di Guido o d'Alessandro o di lor frate

 per fonte Branda non darei la vista."

The towers such as they are to-day, stricken by time and shadowed by the ill fame of their ancient masters, stand up stark upon the hill-top still, facing the place of death.

This is our last glimpse of them. We have now completely turned away from the Valley, though glimpses of it still are seen behind. Romena is not the final impression of the Casentino which we shall carry away. The worst of the ascent is now done. The road passes along a bare mountain ridge, wild, treeless, and strewn with rocks and boulders. On the left you look across to the Pratomagno, with its mighty ribs robed in heavy purple and overlaid in June with the gold of the broom, in December with snow. Behind you, between the intervening shoulders of the nearer hills, the Valley still appears, smiling and radiant, far-off, an enchanted land, Poppi beautiful in the midst, La Verna high over all. But the vision of it becomes more and more obstructed. The road turns and it is lost, and again with another turn it reappears, each time more blue, more visionary, a land of dreams, sinking away from us.  Now Poppi is gone; only La Verna remains, greeting the eyes anew when one thought it was lost for good.

When the village of Consuma, bleak and straggling upon the bare ridge, is reached and passed, you feel that now indeed the last farewell to the Valley has been said. But no!  Suddenly the sad desolate hills open for one moment, and there, shining upon the mountains, infinitely far off, is La Verna, sending across its message for the last time. A flash, and it is gone. The Casentino has sunk out of sight.

After passing Borselli, a tiny wayside hamlet about three miles beyond Consuma, the road descends gradually into the Val d'Arno. Distant views open before the traveller, faint and blue. The lower course of the river, which we have so lately left in its infancy behind us, is now visible in front, with the mountain ranges rolling back from it on either side, like the waves of the Red Sea piled up for the passage of the Chosen People. There, opposite, is the suave line of hills crowned by the pines around the Dominican Convent of the Incontro, and far away to the right appear the summits of the Pistoiese alps, which for a considerable part of the year. show golden snows against the blue of the sky. The face of the country changes as one rapidly descends. At Diacceto the valley begins to open below and the river is seen sweeping on its way. How different from the shallow, rippling young stream of the Casentino, but newly freed from the mountain caves! Here it is broad and quiet and strong, like one that has lost the hurry and excitement of youth, but knows now its way and its end. And what a different world it flows through from the region of its birth! The landscape smiles, gentle, serene, immense, beneath the wide blue sky, and the caress of the grey-green olives is upon all the soft slopes, the tree so clear, so delicate, so Florentine. You feel that the City of Flowers is not far off. Not even a ruined tower is here, to break with the thought of the angry past the peace which the olive symbolises. The wild and sterile Apennines are left far behind. Only the shoulder of the Pratomagno, sharply peaked on winter days with snow still rises mountainous and frowning, on the left, patched high up with the dark forests of Vallombrosa, to remind one still of Alpine regions and Etrurian shades.